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Forum: A wise and determined consultant

By MARCUS CHOWN

The world needs changing. We all know it does. Every night, on our tele-vision
screens, we are confronted with the graphic evidence of that. So many things
are wrong that we often feel overwhelmed, numbed, impotent. But such feelings
are little more than an indulgence. Doing nothing is tantamount to complicity,
a recipe for catastrophe. What the world needs more than ever is people
who will make a stand against bigotry and hypocrisy, greed and corruption
wherever they see it – troublemakers who will fight to their last breath
for what they believe in.

One such troublemaker was Frank Lesser. In his long life, he created
trouble for a host of people and organisations: from black-shirted fascists
to irresponsible pharmaceuticals companies to over-zealous traffic wardens
who regularly patrolled the streets outside the offices of New Scientist.
For Lesser, in one of his many incarnations, was this magazine’s pharmacology
consultant.

A lean, fit man, apparently in his early sixties, although in fact pushing
eighty, Lesser breezed into New Scientist’s newsroom every Thursday afternoon
to scour the medical journals and generally keep us on our toes. Engaging
in verbal fencing with Lesser was at once exhilarating and nerve-racking.
For Lesser had a rapier-sharp mind, and a single false move was enough to
leave his sparring partner impaled and wriggling.

It was no contest. For Lesser drew on a fount of wisdom which sprang
from his experiences in a world far larger and more significant than the
parochial world of science journalism. An extraordinary person born into
an extraordinary time, in the 1930s he had shouldered a gun to fight fascism
in the Spanish Civil War. Later, in the 1940s, the pen was his chosen weapon
as he became Moscow correspondent of the communist Daily Worker newspaper
– until, that is, his troublemaking nature got the better of him again.
After castigating Stalin in a letter, he was sent home at the request of
the Soviet authorities. Back in Britain, aged 40 and unemployed, he turned
his attention to science.

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Here Lesser revealed his iron determination. How many people can there
be who have carved out an academic career starting so late in life? Lesser’s
single-mindedness in achieving a goal was quite frightening. He was an irresistible
force and it seemed there was nothing he could not achieve simply by applying
the power of his will. He rose smoothly and swiftly to the lofty height
of reader in pharmacology at the then Chelsea College in London.

It was only after he had retired that Lesser became New Scientist’s
pharmacology consultant. Scathing of drugs companies and the way they often
put profits before human life, he had earlier fought for the rights of
victims of the drug thalidomide. At New Scientist, he continued his campaigning
and infected a younger generation of journalists with a strong scepticism
for the inflated claims drugs companies made about their products.

His trademark was the ‘definitive answer’. Lesser considered it his
duty, when asked a question, to provide the fullest and most comprehensive
reply possible. This could stress whoever had asked, as their phone rang
unanswered and they contemplated a deadline racing ever nearer. But Lesser
was nothing if not thorough. Finally, after half an hour, he would wind
up, satisfied he had delivered it: the definitive answer.

Lesser’s articles for New Scientist displayed a maverick touch. He wrote
about complex issues on which he had strong and highly informed opinions
and saw no reason to reduce them to the lowest common denominator of Lego-language
journalism. The result was sometimes murder to edit into a short news story.
But Lesser was surprisingly tolerant of ham-fisted hacking and retained
a youthful enthusiasm for seeing his words in print.

Lesser was still showing that youthful enthusiasm a year ago, before
it was discovered that he had cancer. Now the traffic wardens around New
Scientist look smug again. No doubt Lesser’s other adversaries are feeling
good as well. Someone needs to wipe the smiles of their faces. Today, the
world is desperately short of troublemakers like Frank Lesser.